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Opto-Electronics and Communications Conference (OECC)

Plug-and-play quantum cryptography

Abdessattar Bouzid, Jun-Bum Park, Hyun-Woo Ha, Min‐Soo Lee, Il Young Kim, Sung Moon

Published Jul 1, 2012• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We present an experimental demonstration of a full quantum key distribution system employing weak laser pulses over a standard telecommunications fiber that uses the so-called "Plug and Play" or "auto-compensating" scheme. First experimental results show a fringe visibility of 0.985 and a quantum bit error rate of 2.3 % for a 25 km optical link.

DOI
10.1109/oecc.2012.6276392

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We present an experimental demonstration of a full quantum key distribution system employing weak laser pulses over a standard telecommunications fiber that uses the so-called "Plug and Play" or "auto-compensating" scheme. First experimental results show a fringe visibility of 0.985 and a quantum bit error rate of 2.3 % for a 25 km optical link.
We have recently constructed a fiber-optic “plug and play” quantum cryptography system as shown in Fig.1, wherein a Faraday-Mirror was used to compensate the polarization mode dispersion and phase drifts. It worked at 1550 nm and was based on the B92 protocol[1]. We have achieved stable quantum key distribution in a standard telecom fiber with different working-distances of 10, 25 and 50 km, respectively, by using some specifically developed techniques to guarantee long-term stability of our system, such as polarization-independent phase-modulation for stable phase encoding and decoding, hybrid coincidence for efficient detection of single photons with coincidence-gated quenching of the single-photon detectors followed by coincident counting of the avalanche signals, and synchronized detection of single-photon pulses by coincidence counting gated with proper delay and width. These unique techniques greatly enhanced the fringe visibility of single-photon interference. And we have also demonstrated the application of our system in cryptographic communication by sending coded pictures from Alice to Bob using the sifted quantum keys.
A six-user quantum key distribution network based on the auto-compensating plug & play scheme is experimentally demonstrated. The network, which has a bus line topology, uses the BB84 protocol to transmit cryptographic keys encoded unto the phase states of highly attenuated laser light to distances of up to 30.9 km of standard telecommunication-grade fiber. Each user on the network is assigned a unique wavelength for communication with the network server. The quantum bit error rate and sifted key rate measured compares favorably with theory.
Abstract Robust, simple, and flexible quantum key distribution (QKD) is vital for realizing practical applications of this technique. Contrary to typical phase-coded QKD schemes, the plug-and-play QKD design requires only one arm-length-insensitive interferometer without active feedback, in which the noise is automatically compensated by the two-way structure. However, there are certain possible loopholes in the typical plug-and-play designs, which require consideration and strict monitoring. This study proposes a new design of theoretically loophole-free plug-and-play QKD scheme with two-way protocol and presents an experimental demonstration of said scheme. The security is analyzed under a collective attack scenario assisted by the decoy state method. The scheme was implemented in a 50.4 km commercial fibre without active feedback. The system showed highly robust performance with an ultra-low error rate and maintained an ultra-high visibility of 0.9947 ± 0.0002 through significant environmental changes over 24 hours.
We present a time-multiplexed interferometer based on Faraday mirrors, and apply it to quantum key distribution. The interfering pulses follow exactly the same spatial path, ensuring very high stability and self balancing. Use of Faraday mirrors compensates automatically any birefringence effects and polarization dependent losses in the transmitting fiber. First experimental results show a fringe visibility of 0.9984 for a 23km-long interferometer, based on installed telecom fibers. In so-called private-key cryptographic systems, secure transmission through unprotected channels rely on the exchange of secret keys, known only to the sender, Alice, and the receiver, Bob. Quantum cryptography (QC) relies on the properties of quantum mechanics to obtain a provably secure key distribution [1, 2, 3, 4]. Most exisiting implementations rely on either the polarization [2, 5, 6] or the phase [7, 8, 9, 10] of very weak pulses of light as information carrier. To date, the longest transmission spans were obtained in optical fibers, at a wavelength of 1300 nm [6, 9, 10]. The main difficulty with polarization-based systems is the need to keep stable polarizations over distances of tens of kilometers, in standard telecom cables. Indeed, due to the birefringence of the fibers and the effect of the environment, the output polarization fluctuates randomly. Recent experiments [6]